INS Seeks Money For Border Bike Lane
Crossing At San Ysidro Would Be 1st Of Its Kind

SAN DIEGO -- Immigration officials are seeking $570,000 to fund a proposed bike lane at the San Ysidro border crossing near San Diego.

The lane, a first of its kind, would accommodate the surge in bicycle traffic between Mexico and the United States since border security was tightened after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service said plans call for the widening and striping of a bike-only lane near the bus lane, which cyclists had previously shared with buses.

Before Sept. 11, about 50 bikes crossed the border daily. The number of bicycle border crossers has since surged to as many as 2,000 a day as more commuters try to avoid the long waits at checkpoints for pedestrians and drivers.

I have a better (and cheaper) idea. Why don't the morons at INS revert to the pre-Sept 11 situation and remove the metal detectors? The metal detectors do not deter a terrorist attack, they merely shift the location of said attack from inside the building where there are at least armed officers present to outside, where the pedestrian line snakes back into Mexico. That line, full of unarmed civilians, makes a much more tempting target than a hard target filled with people with guns.
Doing this would reduce the ped lines, and the bike population would probably revert to 50 a day or so, ending the whole situation.